Renée Peck

Renee Peck, editor of NolaVie, worked for 32 years as a feature editor and writer at The Times-Picayune, earning Associated Press and Press Club of New Orleans awards along the way. She helped launch the first Times-Picayune website in the 1990s, when the Internet was in its infancy. Among her past titles are Food Editor, Entertainment Editor, TV Editor, Assistant Living Editor, and Home and Garden Editor. Her This Mold House column chronicled with humor and inexpertise her rebuilding efforts post-Katrina. Her Big Easy Living column for NolaVie explores the way we live in this always entertaining but sometimes uneasy city. Email her at Renee@nolavie.com.

Ways to Connect

Editor's Note: In celebration of the city’s upcoming Tricentennial, NolaVie and New Orleans Historical bring you the series Who Did it Better: New Orleans Then and Now. In it, we look at offbeat aspects of the city’s history and their parallels in the present. Today we go to City Park, in a segment we call A Walk in the Park.

New Orleans has a great new tool for music lovers. A Closer Walk is an interactive, location-based website about New Orleans music history. Just tap the map and you can find songs, rare photos, stories by local writers, and much more. One of the project’s founders, author Randy Fertel, speaks with NolaVie’s Renée Peck to share more about A Closer Walk.

In celebration of the city’s upcoming Tricentennial, NolaVie and New Orleans Historical bring you the series Who Did it Better? New Orleans Then and Now. In it, we look at offbeat aspects of the city’s history and their parallels in the present. Today we give you: Big Easy Bikes. Call it a story about recycling.

New Orleans is a city of stories, stories that weave a collective tapestry of a rich and colorful past. Students in the history department at UNO have been spinning these threads into a collection of app-based tours called New Orleans Historical. NolaVie's Renee Peck speaks with historian Molly Mitchell to learn more.

Some innovative educators in New Orleans are rethinking high school. When New Harmony High opens next year, it won’t look – or act -- like a conventional school. That’s because it will most likely be situated on a barge on the Mississippi River. And its curriculum will include some unique lessons about coastal land loss. NolaVie's Renee Peck sits down with Sunny Dawn Summers, New Harmony's Head of School, to hear about this distinctive project.

Salads used to just be a side, or even an afterthought to the meal. These days, they’ve taken center stage as entrees, often with complex combinations and ingredients. French native and New Orleans transplant Jean-Mark Sens is an authority on leafy greens, and NolaVie’s Renée Peck speaks with him about the once lowly salad and its cultural evolution.

If it’s Mother’s Day, it must be termite swarm season. Few people know this fact better than Zack Lemann. He is the chief entomologist at the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, where he indulges his lifelong love of New Orleans and all of its six-legged denizens. So why does he live, breath and yes, even eat insects? NolaVie’s Renée Peck met with Zack to find out.

Going to war takes courage. Sometimes, coming home takes the same. U.S. combat veterans who have survived life-threatening injuries can find the transition from hot zone to home life a difficult one. In New Orleans, an organization called Bastion is lending a hand. NolaVie’s Renée Peck spoke to founder Dylan Tête about the community he is building in Gentilly for wounded veterans and their families.

New Orleans after dark skews toward the spiritual, and it always has. This year the Hermann-Grima House has teamed up with the Tennessee Williams Festival to look into this fascinating aspect of New Orleans lore. As part of their investigation, they have invited local spiritual medium Juliet Pazera to lead a Victorian-style séance at this historic home in the French Quarter.

It’s not an idea that’s new. For centuries, New Orleanians have been taking in lodgers. But technology and a changing culture have transformed the way house rentals work. Airbnb and other sites are making short-term rental options not only easier, but also vastly more widespread. NolaVie’s Renée Peck spoke with attorney Andrew Legrand about the short-term rental ordinance recently passed by the New Orleans City Council, and what it means for locals.